A week in the culture war

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Those who continue to deny that America is in the throes of a culture war and that secularists are taking aim against Christianity and its values are either not reading and watching the news or are in major denial.

Look at this week's headlines alone. The Supreme Court has decided to review the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling outlawing "under G-d" from the Pledge of Allegiance.

The high court has also agreed to review a case involving the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act, a measure designed to restrict Internet pornography.
A taxpayer-funded charter school in California that will stress values-oriented teaching about animal rights has been approved. A California church group upset with the promotion of a "Traditional Marriage Week" has called for a "Marriage Equality Week" to promote same-sex "marriage." And, a highly decorated army general, Jerry Boykin, is castigated as a Holy Warrior because he had the audacity openly to declare his faith in the G-d of the Bible. Terry Schiavo fights for her life as competing forces square off as to whether her "plug should be pulled."

The pledge case illustrates that certain groups in our society want to treat Christianity and references to the Christian G-d as a contagious disease, an unborn virus. If not contained within the four walls of our private homes, it will infect the population with an incurable affliction.

Those of you who think the Judge Roy Moore Ten Commandments flap in Alabama was some isolated sideshow are woefully misguided. Those of you who think that courageous Christians like Moore are the ones picking this fight by waiving the Bible in our faces apparently aren't aware of the city by city, county by county, state by state crusade the ACLU is on to eradicate Ten Commandments displays from all public buildings.

This secularist obsession to achieve a strict separation of church and state is not only not mandated by the Constitution, it is at war with the Constitution's very designs about religious freedom. In the name of promoting religious liberty, the enemies of Christianity are using the First Amendment Establishment Clause as a weapon to suppress Christian religious freedom.

No student is being forced to say the Pledge, much less the words "under G-d." This isn't a case of the government imposing Christian values on vulnerable children. This is not about separation, but about a small intolerant minority forcing its will on a heretofore passive and non-combative majority.

If the secularists were truly sincere about their affinity for the phantom principle of "separation of church and state," they would be having seizures over this government-funded charter school imposing its values on school children. They would object to the education establishment's emphasis on social engineering over academic achievement.

They would go berserk over the schools' speech and conduct codes disguised as anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies. They would be outraged over the "comprehensive" sex-education curriculum being foisted on many of our schoolchildren.

No, you won't hear from the secularists on these issues. They reserve their ire for Christians, such as General Boykin, who has dared to disclose his Christian faith while holding an important position in the Defense Department. Christianity, to the secularists, is a disqualifying attribute for public office. And if Christians somehow slip through the screening obstacles, they must keep their Christian beliefs strictly to themselves. Ask John Ashcroft, Rick Santorum, William Pryor, David Hager, Jerry Thacker and the countless other Christian appointees and officials whose public service has been opposed by those who believe Christians shouldn't be allowed to participate in government or the political process.

The secularists also reserve their energy and passion for promoting such high-minded ideals as the open and unfettered dissemination of Internet pornography. The ACLU is apparently concerned that any efforts to protect the innocence of our children from the oppressive bombardment of Internet smut is merely the first step on that slippery slope that will eventually lead to the evaporation of our liberties.

You see, what we must realize is that these secular civil libertarians who are cloaked in freedom costumes are often the most insidious opponents of freedom and traditional values in our culture. They can talk freedom until they're blue in the face, but it is not freedom they champion, but a certain worldview  ' to the exclusion of biblical Christianity.

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David Limbaugh, a columnist and attorney practicing in Cape
Girardeau, Mo., is the author of, most recently, "Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR. ) Comment by clicking here.